The Dow’s share-price weighting gives Goldman Sachs greater influence than Microsoft in the DIA exchange-traded fund, despite Microsoft’s far larger market value.
A quirk of the Dow Jones Industrial Average means a company’s influence in one of America’s best-known exchange-traded funds can have little to do with size, sales or profits. In the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust, Goldman Sachs currently carries more weight than Microsoft, even though Microsoft is worth many times more in the market. The reason is simple: the Dow is built on share price, not market value.
That structure matters because the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted index of 30 blue-chip US companies. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, stocks with higher share prices receive greater influence over the index, regardless of how much the company is actually worth. Goldman Sachs closed at $923.99 on September 24, 2026, compared with Microsoft at $497.15, which is why Goldman gets a larger allocation in DIA. A stock split would change that balance mechanically, even if the underlying business remained exactly the same.
For investors, the more important issue may be what that means for portfolio exposure. State Street says DIA holds all 30 Dow components and charges a gross expense ratio of 0.16%. That is not excessive, but it is notably higher than broad market index funds that track the S&P 500. Vanguard’s VOO, for example, charges 0.03%, and because it is market-cap weighted, it gives the largest companies the largest influence in proportion to their actual size.
The result is that DIA can behave differently from what many buyers expect from an index fund. Rather than mirroring the biggest American companies in order of economic scale, it gives extra sway to whichever Dow members happen to trade at the highest share prices. That tends to lift financials such as Goldman and can leave mega-cap technology names with less influence than investors might assume. For anyone buying DIA as a straightforward proxy for large US stocks, it is worth checking the top holdings and remembering that in the Dow, the price tag on the share, not the size of the business, is what sets the weight.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
